Abstract:
Decent, affordable housing and secure housing tenure remain elusive for Africa’s urban
majority. The urban majority is expected to live in self-help housing, reflected in the fact that 62% of
African urban dwellers live in urban informal settlements. The inability to access safe, decent, and
secure housing, and the reality that Africa’s urban majority is perpetually precarious, have a severe
impact on Africa’s urban households and the well-being of individuals, families, and neighborhoods.
This article articulates housing as a critical and urgent Christian social practice in African cities—an
extension of the church’s pastoral and missional concern. It considers housing both as a product and
a process: people need housing to live secure lives; yet, the process of housing is as critical as the
outcome. It then proposes housing, as a Christian social practice, being engaged in (i) supporting
precarious households; (ii) preventing homelessness; (iii) creating housing; (iv) supporting rightsbased land and housing movements; and (v) centering housing pastorally–liturgically. The article
grounds itself in Jean-Marc Ela’s insistence on God’s presence ‘in the hut of a mother whose granary
is empty’ and in Letty Russell’s ‘household of freedom’.
